EP 2: Crashing the Real World Party: Lessons and Advice for Military-to-Civilian Transition

EP 2: Crashing the Real World Party: Lessons and Advice for Military-to-Civilian Transition featuring: Johanna Ream, Matt Stanley, PhD, Katie and Joe Rebholz and, Art Behnke.  

Join us for an engaging exploration as we delve into the challenging transition from military to civilian careers. We kick off with a compelling dialogue with Johanna Reem, an Air Force officer going through the interview and application phase, aka "The Soup', she sheds light on converting military experiences into civilian-friendly terms, crafting the perfect elevator pitch, and how her personal passions guide her path.

In our episode's second segment, we gain profound insights from our expert, Dr. Matt Stanley of Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. Matt is a research fellow at the Veterans Transition Research Initiative and reveals the team's research findings on hidden biases in the civilian job sphere and examines the effects of the 'hero label' on veterans.  Host Cheryl Cross delves deeper into the word "Agentic" and Dr. Stanley's perspective on how this label narrows options,  and nudges veterans towards lower-paying roles.

1+ year vet's and former military spouses, Joe and Katie, share their firsthand accounts of trading their military uniforms for corporate attire. They emphasize the importance of networking, strategic planning, and life adaptation, especially when trying to time their transition as a couple. They talk about 'dropping their papers' and how you may be perceived by your unit as you plan ahead for a career outside of the military. 

Former US Marine Corps Officer, Art Behnke has an interesting tale, going straight from leading a command to running a recruiting division at a manufacturing plant, he learned to fine tune his people skills and make connec

If you or someone you know would like to be a guest on the Military to Civilian Career Transition Power Hour, let us know. Go to www.xchangepodcast.com and click connect. A producer will read your request and get back to you. Thanks for your support!

Learn more about host, Cheryl Cross and her book, "CIVILIAN MISSION: The 3-Year Guide for Military Professionals Planning Civilian Careers" available for order online.

Transcript

Welcome to the Show: 0:00

Thanks for listening to the Military to Civilian Career Transition Power Hour One hour of tips from experts and real stories from people just like you. For those thinking about what lies ahead, for those going through the job search and those who have paved the way to their next career after the military. These professionals are dedicated to helping you move forward successfully to the next phase of your career after the military. Welcome to X CHANGE.

Cheryl Cross: 0:30

Welcome back to the show. I'm Cheryl Cross. I'm so excited to bring you our first guest, and at the top of every hour we always bring you somebody who has is rather going through what we call the soup, Somebody who is actively interviewing, looking for that next career. So I'd like to introduce you to someone I met at a wonderful conference recently here in Honolulu Johanna Ream. Hi, Johanna, how are you?

Johanna Ream: 0:58

Good morning, Cheryl, I'm doing well.

Cheryl Cross: 1:00

Thank you. I'm so glad to have you here and have you coming from the Air Force. I know a bit about your background, but I'd like to know a little bit more about sort of what you've been doing this last 20 years and what you hope to do in the next 20.

Johanna Ream: 1:15

Wonderful. I'm really excited to talk to you about this. Not just my story, but I know I'm one of several folks going through this transition process. So, to answer your question, I have been in the Air Force for 22 years. Did the typical four year ROTC scholarship came straight in at age 22. You know, wanted to save the world and see the world and do all the things and man, those 22 years go by fast and each year the time just goes by faster. Within the span of 22 years I've had nine duty stations and they've been good, each one challenging different, not only Air Force assignments but Army Ones, joint Commands. I've been at the tactical level. I've been all the way up to, like, the national security strategy level, so it's been an amazing experience. I'm actually very thankful to the Air Force and the Military in general for giving us this. They really push us forward and make us grow and learn.

Cheryl Cross: 2:16

So, having this experience, which is very military specific, how are you planning to put this into the corporate or civilian job force? What are your thoughts?

Johanna Ream: 2:27

That is the question of the career in my transition is how do we translate the skills, the experience, how do we translate the acronyms when I say TDY and PCS and all those things? It's a lot about translating and I didn't. It was a blind spot for me. I didn't realize I had the blind spot of this translation. And so what I'm learning is to talk about my experience, my lessons that I've learned, in a way that resonates with any organization that I am looking into.

Johanna Ream: 3:06

For example, I may lead a military organization of 200 people and we were out there and we were finding terrorists and all that stuff. Man, a lot of companies don't want to hear what we were doing to terrorists. They just don't want to know. And so what I'm learning to do and I've been talking with folks like yourself, thank you for all your mentorship is translating. Hey, yes, that's what we were doing, but what was my behavior, what was my skill set? And so I'm focusing on my behavior was? It was stressful, but I had clarity, I was calm, I called in the right folks. You know what was the environment? Man, it was a bit chaotic. We didn't know what was going to happen next. So, really talking about the situation, my behaviors and my skills, and not necessarily the very militaristic jargon, if you would. So that's what I've learned so far.

Cheryl Cross: 4:04

I agree with you. I think boiling it down to technical and functional skills, no matter what the environment is, you could be out in a field, you could be working undercover, you could be an intel analyst, you could be. You could be collecting data on people that you know. Quite frankly, because of clearances, we're never going to learn about what you did. So I like that. I've not heard that before. So thanks, thanks so much for sharing. You know what you did in stressful situations.

Cheryl Cross: 4:31

When it comes to technical and functional skills, let's go back to that because I'm curious, with your incredible background, how are you translating that for the civilian job force? And I mean, how would you present yourself in, say, an elevator pitch? You know so they would understand and, let's face it, a lot of people in the civilian workforce don't understand military at all, or they want to talk to you about all the parts that you're not allowed to talk about because they think it's cool, which also lends itself to a lot of other problems. So let's go back to the technical and functional and talk to me as if you were in an elevator, how you would present yourself quickly and, to say, a corporate manager.

Johanna Ream: 5:17

Great. Before I launch into my elevator pitch, I've also learned to have like three different options of careers. So, like my three things are a DOD contractor, or I would love to work in the tourism industry because we live near Honolulu and I love to travel. And my third one is maybe helping out a nonprofit organization to fight human trafficking that is so prevalent. So those are my three passions and interests and so I have to have an elevator pitch tailored to who I'm talking to. So my current one, especially for a DOD contractor again, that's my current comfort zone. So I need to grow into those other industries, either a nonprofit with anti-human trafficking or tourism industry. But currently what I would use for the like a DOD contractor is I say hi, my name is Johanna. I just spent 22 years serving in the Air Force. I enjoy serving and I'm looking to do it in a different capacity, using my experience, my skills and, quite frankly, how I can encourage others to come together as a team and get the goals of the organization accomplished.

Cheryl Cross: 6:29

I like that. It's kind of a continuing the mission, and if you're talking to someone in the DOD who's working as a management consultant or is hiring people to serve the same client that you've been an employee of, it is continuing the mission. Understanding certain regions gives you an edge and you being in the Indo-Pacific AOR and understanding the problem sets is a big deal. So lucky for you. You want to stay. I wish you the best of luck. Now let's talk about how you might tailor that to, say, a nonprofit. Let's say you're in the elevator with a group of people. You kind of don't know their background because you can't say so what do you do? Oh, this is what I do. Well, how might you handle that? I know you're good on the spot, so I'm going to put you on the spot.

Johanna Ream: 7:16

Oh gosh, sounds good. So if I was in an elevator with one of my favorite nonprofits it's called Operation Underground Railroad I don't know if we need to do plugs or anything, but Operation Underground Railroad is a huge nonprofit that fights human trafficking and I would say to them hey, your mission of saving these children from the horrors of trafficking, it's inspiring to me and I want to join. I have 22 years of military experience leading teams being in uncertain and chaotic environments and I think I have the motivation to be a part of your team. Would love to talk to you more about how I could fit in.

Cheryl Cross: 7:59

That's nice. I like that, I like that.

Cheryl Cross: 8:01

Let's say, you meet somebody who's pretty vague about their background and you kind of want to roll everything into one conversation. So you want to give them options because, let's remember, everybody isn't going to give you a job, but a lot of people want to help you. So if you live in an area or an environment where people are very connected, I fully believe if you ask for help, they will try their best to give it to you. So, using that framework, I'm going to put you on the spot here. What would you do in that situation? It doesn't have to be an elevator full of people, but it might be say, just a couple of people that you're hey, I'm Cheryl, I'm introducing you to my friends Julie and Deborah, and you say and I say I know that Johanna is looking for a job what would you say?

Johanna Ream: 8:47

Thank you, nice to meet you, Cheryl. Thank you for introducing me. I am really looking at options of where I can best continue to serve really the human domain of either serving or organizing. I'm really looking forward to seeing what is out there who could use me. I am an extrovert, I'm a hard worker and I have a very strategic view of an organization where I can really kind of help manage a program.

Cheryl Cross: 9:23

Do you have any ideas for me? Oh, are you working in an organization that does that? You know you always want to ask, ask, ask and then give. I think you're not going to have any problems with your job search. Tell me a little bit about this, how you're feeling during the job search. You brought up how you're translating. You're kind of trying to hack it right. You're translating your experience into how the emotions were dealt with on a sort of a tactical level. But what are you feeling? And just take the hat off of professionalism and tell me down in dirty, because the people that are listening will be going through this at one point. I want them to understand it's not easy. So what are you going through emotionally? Is it easy, is it hard?

Johanna Ream: 10:11

Yeah, it is harder than I thought it was going to be, mostly because a lot of well-meeting co-workers and friends are like oh Joe, you're so smart with your background, you'll have no problem. So I just assumed any job that I applied for I would get. Not the case it took. You know, I've applied for 10, I've gotten two interviews and the jobs that I interviewed with were not what I thought they were, and so we decided to go different ways and I was like oh no, I'm running out of time, so it's difficult.

Johanna Ream: 10:44

One of the things that comes to mind is we kind of have this mindset coming out of the military like, hey, what, why wouldn't you want me? But I think I scared some folks off, like in the tourism industry I applied to be an intern a hotel like down Honolulu, and I sent him my very military resume and they're like no, we're good, we don't thank you for your interest, we don't need you. I'm like not even for free? A nd not even for a skill bridge internship? And they're like no, thank you, we're looking for somebody else. And I was like okay, I was hurt, you know, because I thought I was a pretty big deal, but to them I wasn't and so it takes a lot of tailoring and I realized that first resume and the cover sheet making sure it's really tailored, not just having, you know, kind of a general one that I give to my nonprofit and tourism and DOD contractor they cannot all be the same and that was a lesson I had to learn the hard way.

Cheryl Cross: 11:40

Did you choose to do a federal resume as well, or did you only want to put your sights on civilian? I did, yes, I also, yeah, yeah, corporate.

Johanna Ream: 11:50

Um, so I did. I did both a federal and a civilian resume, yes.

Cheryl Cross: 12:20

Now I'm curious when you, when you reached out to that tourism board or whoever, and they're like Whoa, whoa, whoa, we're going to be a good one, so we're looking, I believe and I'm assuming that they may have said we're looking for someone straight out of college, maybe their first job out of high school or college, which is the entry level. So internships in the corporate world are a little different. They don't generally give time frames to experienced people like yourself, which is why skill bridge is so important for people who have an established set of skills functions. They've been doing certain MOSs for so many years and I think that that skill bridge truly is the gap between that. But I'm curious have you been applying to skill bridge? Are you looking at any of those?

Johanna Ream: 13:12

Thank you. Yes, the DOD skill bridge has been an amazing resource. I'm so thankful to have had it. It has really given me the time and space to think about what do I want to be when I grow up, and it kind of lets me dream a little bit.

Johanna Ream: 13:30

My skill bridge journey has been a little different because I went the education route, so I wasn't necessarily an intern right away and I was able to get my program management professional certification I'm almost finished with it and then I found in doing that I was able to still work on my resume. I was able to breathe and do some interviews. I was able to go to a veteran hiring seminars like Cheryl, where you and I met. So that skill bridge really gave me the space to figure it out. And my sister, who's not associated with the military at all, she's like yeah, Johanna, she calls me Joey, it takes six months to get somebody into the military. They should give you six months to get out, and I thought that was very well said. So that's kind of what the skill bridge has allowed me to do To have both the hey, I'm working on myself with the certification and then also continue doing the job hunt and finding an organization I would really like to work for. I like that.

Cheryl Cross: 14:32

And just a reminder for the folks listening 180 days is sort of the terminal leave. Hopefully that you get, you might be medically retired and that might change. There's all these flavors to that. But taking that 180 days Now you and I Johanna, I think you understand one of the reasons I created the podcast, that I'm writing the books is I see that even the year that they're giving you and the week long taps or E-taps classes aren't sufficient. So can I ask how much in advance were you preparing for your transition? Was it six months a year? Was it longer? Thankfully it was longer, but not more.

Johanna Ream: 15:18

Really due to anything that I was being smart, I just was getting anxious. I didn't know what I didn't know. So I ended up doing TAP at the 18 month mark and then again at the 6 month mark and I was really, I think, doing tap twice, doing it early. In fact I went to the 18 month mark ready to retire and then I was like, oh, I don't, I don't. It actually helped me decide I wasn't ready. So having those days to think about you going through the tap classes, what does your life look like? Are you financially ready? Are you personally ready to hang up the uniform? Going through tap twice was great because that first one was very much a soul searching tap class for me. And then the second tap, when I knew I was going to retire, after my retirement was approved, was when I was ready to get down and get down to work. So I say, do tap early, do it twice if you can, and don't wait till the very end. And Cheryl, you mentioned, you know that the 180 days of I'll call it transition space within that 180. This is basically DOD why I work with a lot of joint folks within that 180 days. That includes, that's inclusive of terminal, permissive house hunting and skill bridge. So all of those transition activities are within that 180 days.

Johanna Ream: 16:45

Now and then, to answer your other question, is tap enough? I would say no, tap is good. It's the required class that DOD has us go through. It's congressionally mandated that we go through it and I'm very glad that mandate exists because many of us military members probably we usually don't do a whole lot unless you mandate us to do it. So we're going to do it, especially a class like that, and it was very, very good. But the three days or the five days there's so much information there's not time to do. There's not time in those five or three days to go to the VA to do your financial training. It is just a wonderful networking, wonderful download of information. So I actually have been introduced to other veteran services organizations who have held my hand before and after tap, checked in on me and helped me through the career transition.

Cheryl Cross: 17:45

That's a journey, what a journey. Tell me some of those resources. We'll certainly make sure that we link them.

Johanna Ream: 17:51

Wonderful who was helping you. I initially started, and still work with Hiring our Heroes HOH, they are wonderful. They are kind of the largest and kind of the gateway for how I got in. They helped me with my first resume. They helped me connect with my skill bridge education track. They were wonderful. And then about two months ago I was introduced to a fellow officer who was retiring, another organization called COMMIT. Just like it sounds like I am committed to something, commit, they asked you kind of the more life questions. They helped me think through hey, what are your three options? What does your life look like post retirement? If no one was judging you not your friends, not your spouse, not your family what would you do? What do you want to do? And then it talks about your values and those deep human level questions. So the commit foundation absolutely phenomenal.

Cheryl Cross: 19:01

Thanks and Onward to Opportunity. Were you involved with them for your PMP? Can you talk about that?

Johanna Ream: 19:07

Absolutely so. Hiring our Heroes led me to onward to opportunity, and I only heard about onward to opportunity because I was in TAP with another lady who was doing it. So TAP is so good for networking and being with other folks that are transitioning. Now I will say there's probably a cultural difference between separating members going to TAP and retiring members going to TAP, and it's simply those TAP demographics are where our military service members are in their life. Like I went to TAP and we had all retirees and we had a different perspective. However, maybe there's an airman or a soldier who's going to TAP who'd been in for four to six years and wants to do something completely different which is to their benefit. What I found out in the retirement TAP class is we're like holy crap, this has been our identity for over 20 years. Where do I go from here? We were a little bit more hamstrung than even those junior members, because we're like this is our career is so much part of our identity in our life. I don't know what I'm going to do next.

Cheryl Cross: 20:16

You bring up a good point and I'm going to pounce on it. So you're leaving a very predicted, structured environment and you're moving into what? What are your thoughts of the world outside of the military? I've heard words like the abyss. I'm the great unknown. What are some of yours? What are some of your thoughts?

Johanna Ream: 20:39

I would agree with that, the unknown for sure. Thankfully the DOD and government contracting and civilian jobs are abundant. You know, for us that are separating from the military, so there's always that smooth choice if you want to continue. Government service. Outside of government service absolutely scares me to death. I don't quite know what to do or who to talk to. I thought I would again, just because I think I'm great and I've served my country. Who wouldn't want to hire me? But what I'm learning is the companies and I know I'm preaching to the choir, Cheryl, with you. But companies want to know what you can offer. So that's what I'm trying to hone is tell companies or organizations what I have to offer. But I would agree with you. It is the great abyss that you've known and I got to tell you for, cliche as it sounds, Linkedin has helped me view the outside corporate world, the non-government and government, but the outside world kind of what it looks like you know either, with posts and it's professional networking. That has been a great asset as a window to the outside.

Cheryl Cross: 21:58

I so appreciate your perspectives and I think you know I'm just going to think hopeful thoughts that you're going to have a great experience. But whatever your experience, I hope that you continue to reach out and develop your network, your resources and your support team. This is a huge change and I'm curious to see how you navigate it. We have folks coming up in this hour that will be in their first year of transition and then after five years. So let's bring you back in a year or so so we can hear about how things moved from the unknown to the known. Johanna, thank you so much for being with us today and if there's any last alibis, go ahead and say them now.

Johanna Ream: 22:42

Thank you, Cheryl, just really appreciate the time, and I would encourage those you know departing the military that you, your skills, are needed, your motivation is needed to start early and often spend time thinking about what your post-military life could look like. Thank you.

Cheryl Cross: 23:02

Great advice. Thanks so much. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, cheryl Cross. As you know, we bring so many experts to the table and I am so excited to bring this expert to you today. I found him through one of our thought leaders in the talent acquisition world, which is a fancy name for the recruiting world. He sits on the corporate side, but he also sits at Fuqua's Duke University School of Business and through his information on LinkedIn. His name is Sean Kelly, I learned of Dr Matthew Stanley. Matt, welcome to the show and thanks for being our guest today. Thank you so much for having me. What brought me to your research was your work with the VTRI. Tell us about the VTRI and how you landed there.

Matt Stanley, PhD: 23:50

Yeah, the VTRI is a wonderful initiative. The broad goal is to do more sort of systematic, theoretically driven research on understanding problems that veterans face as they transition to the civilian workforce. So we actually know surprisingly little about the challenges that they face and how to correct them. There just hasn't been a lot of research in this space, which has been really unfortunate, and so much of the purpose of the VTRI is to bring together different groups academics, people who work in policy, people who work in government, people who are leaders at corporations out in the real world and bring them together and try to sort of better facilitate movement for veterans from military service to the civilian workforce, hopefully sort of figure out ways to institute better outcomes for this group.

Cheryl Cross: 25:33

Well, thank you so much, and I think that there is so many of us sitting at this table as ambassadors for these folks who are making these great career transitions and navigating these big changes. You're interesting to me because your research is showing how positive effects could have negative ramifications. Can you go a little bit more in? And then I want to talk about that term, heroization, when you have a second.

Matt Stanley, PhD: 25:58

Absolutely so. Much of my own work is on what we call positive stereotypes. So these are just positively balanced traits and qualities that you sort of attribute to an entire group. So, especially now, we tend to think of military veterans as heroes, as a sort of label that we attach to the entirety of the group. You might think it's like entirely harmless. In fact it's obviously meant to sort of venerate them and celebrate them for their service, for what they've done, and so we don't typically think about these words sort of having potentially negative repercussions for veterans themselves. But there's interesting reasons to sort of think that it might and it might cause certain problems and that sort of labeling this entire group of people could exert some kinds of effects in the world that actually sort of limit their opportunities, potentially make it harder for them to get the kinds of jobs that they want to get and sort of funnel them into a set of lower paying jobs and organizations that they might not actually be interested in.

Cheryl Cross: 26:55

So tell me, a bit about your research and how you uncovered this, and feel free to go into the weeds. The folks that are listening. This directly affects them and I don't think you can elaborate enough, so please tell us how you got there.

Matt Stanley, PhD: 27:07

One thing that we've noticed and one thing that's sort of been made clear recently is that in particular so veterans have traditionally and historically faced an unemployment problem relative to the rest of the population, despite having great skills that they've acquired in the military, all sorts of like positive qualities and attributes that we attribute to them, and then they also face an under employment problem. So even when they're getting jobs, they are often paid less than their peers, even when we sort of match for education. So even among veterans who have college degrees, who have the same kinds of credentials, they often get sort of worse jobs and to lower paying jobs than matched peers. And so we're trying to figure out why that is because people have really positive views of veterans, right. And so what we really did is we zeroed in on this here, a construct on this here, a construct on this here, a label as a positive stereotype and one sort of critical feature of it, one sort of component of what it means to be a hero now is to be somebody who's extraordinarily selfless toward others, who's very willing to serve others in their communities, who's really willing to sacrifice for others, and we tend to think of this as like this positive moral trait or this positive virtue, right. It's something that we sort of all aspire to be, to some extent at least right, and so you might not think that it's necessarily a bad thing. But once you attach the hero label to veterans and you think of them as these, like extraordinarily selfless people who are out there sacrificing for us in all sort of facets of their lives, you tend to think that the places that they really belong, the places that they really fit, the places that they would actually like do well in the workforce, are jobs that they associate with selflessness.

Matt Stanley, PhD: 28:46

So it just turns out that the jobs that we associate with selflessness are jobs that tend to be lower paying, they tend to be grueling in a lot of ways, they tend to be very difficult, right. A lot of very high paying jobs are often not ones that we associate with selflessness. Right, the investment banker isn't somebody that we assume is selfless in any sense. Right. But what we end up doing is we end up thinking that the place that these veterans are going to fit, the place that they're going to do well, is this sort of like limited, narrow set of jobs and organizations that people just associate in their minds with really selfless people and so like. This is obviously limiting and problematic. It sort of limits veterans' agency. It potentially limits their choices. It makes people see them in a way that like even though we think about it as positive in some sense, it could be harmful to them in the world.

Cheryl Cross: 29:40

You know what really blew me away about your research is that you weren't looking at 20, 30 people, you were looking at thousands. Can you share with us some of the data just to blow us away? I mean, these are this is a lot of folks that you've gone through, a lot of perceptions that you moved through. This isn't just a snapshot folks, this is science and this is Dr Stanley's research as his postdoc fellow through Fuqua and I was blown away at the amount of people that you went through. So please share that with us because I think that adds a lot of weight.

Matt Stanley, PhD: 30:12

Yeah, so there's been sort of a move at least in the social sciences to collect big samples in order to find sort of robust effects, if they actually exist.

Matt Stanley, PhD: 30:26

And so what we ended up doing is we ended up recruiting thousands and thousands of participants.

Matt Stanley, PhD: 30:30

I think we have over, I guess, 6,000 across, I think, 13, 14 studies in this paper, and the goal is to be able to sort of say something conclusive about, like, how people are thinking about veterans. We don't want sort of any conclusions that we make to be based on just a small handful of people. We want hundreds and hundreds of people to be responding to these questions, to be thinking about veterans and to be replying to our surveys in order to like really get a good sense for how people generally are thinking about veterans, what they're like, where they might fit and why they might fit in certain places. So we utilize a bunch of different methods, recruit large samples. We've done a lot of work with sort of managers and hiring managers out in the world. We've done a lot of work with representative samples of the general population, and so we try really hard at least to sort of understand what's going on from a few different perspectives, using big samples and different kinds of techniques that are complementary.

Cheryl Cross: 31:29

I like that and thank you so much for doing that. I don't want to say that researchers tend to get where they want to go in order to publish a paper. It really feels like you threw everything into the bucket and you wanted to be surprised by the outcomes. Bias is a part of your research. Bias, I think, is what drives what you're trying to learn. Were you surprised by any of this? And if you were, tell us, because I'm curious.

Matt Stanley, PhD: 31:55

No, I was tremendously surprised. I was really surprised. I didn't expect to find such consistent effects and such strong effects across studies. It's yeah, I didn't necessarily expect.

Matt Stanley, PhD: 32:14

In a lot of ways it's sort of weird and counter-intuitive on the face of it. Why would it be that it's potentially problematic to celebrate veterans, to venerate them, to attach this label to them? Intuitively, we just assume that's a good thing, that's perfectly fine, and so I actually think that in doing this project, one of my co-authors, I think, is generally less surprised by these sorts of things, and so every time that he suggested that we try something new, I would generally push back and assume that there's no chance that it would actually work, and he was usually right most of the time. So yeah, in a lot of ways it's somewhat surprising. But if you sort of like dig in and sort of like, I guess like follow people's logic, like it's, it's a rational and it's based on like fallacious inferences, right, but you can like kind of understand how people are doing it and why they're doing it right.

Matt Stanley, PhD: 33:12

We're just sort of association machines. We make immediate associations, we label people in certain ways. We don't think deeply most of the time. Sometimes we do in like very specific circumstances but like, by and large, we're sort of just moving around the world making associations, making quick, snap judgments, right, and so when you think about veterans, you think about them as heroes. That's one of the first things that comes to your mind. What it means to be a hero is to be somebody who's really really, really selfless, right, and then from there you sort of just assume, you attach oh selfless, they're really selfless. Where do they belong, where do they fit? Where would they do well in these other sort of selfless spheres of civilian life? And so it's largely just a product of people not thinking a lot and making these kinds of quick and sort of immediate associations and judgments.

Cheryl Cross: 34:00

On the veteran side, what would you say? And I know you're not in the business of giving advice. You're in the business of providing research and letting people come to their own conclusions, right. But if you were to step out of that and give some advice to the folks who are listening to us, as they kind of target harden themselves as they walk into these interviews with maybe you know, how do they look for bias? How can they combat this type of bias? How might they protect themselves and represent themselves as truly technical, functional, skilled experts in a field or one that they want to go into?

Matt Stanley, PhD: 34:38

Yeah, this is sort of like the million dollar question that really matters and like the unfortunate thing is we don't have like great data driven answers to it, which is very frustrating in a lot of ways. We're sort of like working toward that right now. What we've been sort of trying to do more than anything is to get it like a better handle on like the specific challenges that veterans face and like why, exactly like what is it that's going on in the minds of hiring managers, of the general population that's leading to these problems, and then hopefully, by like really understanding what's going on and how people are thinking, we can institute some sorts of interventions to at least like mitigate these problems. A lot of the I think the best solutions actually occur sort of like on the institutional side, so like we know that that masking and sort of like double blind procedures and like removing pictures from resumes and things like that do a lot to sort of de-bias people and make the process more fair, and so I think a lot of the changes quite frankly just have to occur on the side of corporations, organizations, institutions to be better in these ways, and I think it seems to be improving, at least in some sectors, there has been sort of a move toward doing more masking and more blinding and removing pictures, and there's software now that exists to sort of automate these process series and some really wonderful companies that are engaged in this and making it easy for companies to actually do a good job of blinding and masking.

Matt Stanley, PhD: 36:18

So I think that's where, like, a lot of these sort of might come, and so I'd say that's sort of like the best place to start. It's sort of unsatisfying in a lot of ways because you want to know like, okay, like I'm a veteran, I just I'm looking for work, I'm hoping to land something that's going to make me happy, going to sort of fulfill my needs right, and there, at this point we can't say a ton about what you should do as a sort of veteran in this process, but we hope to say a whole lot more. That's sort of the ultimate goal, at least in the next couple of years.

Cheryl Cross: 36:54

Thanks. I'm so encouraged by this and I can't wait to read the paper because all I've seen is the abstract and some of the articles on it. One of the reasons I started this journey is I sat as a corporate recruiter interviewing folks who had looking to leave the military, working for a very large firm that worked with the military. So it was, it seemed on the outside a very easy transition, but what I found was they really didn't have the salary negotiation skills and so I created a salary negotiation class. Moving from a predictive, structured career environment where you really don't have a lot of choices, and then going into this fungible, flexible, organic environment was terrifying, and salary was not something I mean. It might have been a page in their transition assistance program, which is called TAPS or E-TAPS, executive transition. It really was, and if I went different bases and saw different TAPS class taught, I heard a lot of different answers. You look in the DoD's labor workshop, take the first salary that's given to you was. I heard that a lot.

Cheryl Cross: 38:03

I was like I'm not saying that that's universal, but what I found was this absolute lack of self-awareness in so many ways, because that wasn't really that they weren't prepared to walk into an organization, knowing that and I think as a recruiter, this is truly one of the pinning points of a career that will have the greatest effect on you your location, your job, your salary, all these things. And folks who are leaving the military have an opportunity for location. Sometimes they're going back to a home of record or another place where they may have served or another place they want to go. So you've got a lot of big things heading up. What is it?

Cheryl Cross: 38:49

The top five things? Death, marriage, job, moving I had two of them jobs and potential relocation of a family, not just one person. So not to know those things really made me very aware of the disparities. So your work in helping organizations understand the biases, I think together we should all hold hands and scream from the rooftops, as we do as ambassadors, and continue this research. Tell me, dr Stanley, your work. You said you have a couple of papers under review. This podcast is prerecorded and will hopefully go on forever, but I'd love to know the research you're doing and how people can check in with you and learn more about you.

Matt Stanley, PhD: 39:34

Absolutely, I guess. Back before going into that, back to the point that you made. Yeah, it's absolutely the case that this is the smallest piece of a giant puzzle that is helping veterans transition to the civilian workforce and getting the kinds of jobs that they want to fulfill their needs and fulfill their family's needs. There's so many places in which we can improve. One is absolutely in negotiation. We're doing some work now on hiring managers assumptions about vets in negotiation. Actually, people tend to think that veterans have a leg up in the hiring process, but we're starting to find that people assume that veterans would actually take less, and so they're inclined to offer them less relative to matched non-veteran peers. We're not 100% sure why that's happening yet, but it does at least seem to be happening. So there's something going on there. That's problematic too, and so, anyway, the point is, they're all of these different places in which we can improve. We can improve in the actual mechanisms behind hiring at institutions and corporations and government. We can improve in training with regard to negotiation, the language too. There's a specific language in the military that you become accustomed to, that you get used to, and I often have a hard time following along. I'm not a veteran myself. But then the corporate America has its own language right, and different fields and sectors have their own language, and so just understanding those norms and the kind of language that people use is huge too, and more so than I think that we assume. And so there are lots of places that we can certainly improve, and this sort of bias component and the stereotyping component is just one piece of the larger puzzle. There's a lot of things that we should be doing, that we can be doing. We just need to figure out how to do it in the best way, in a way that's actually implementable and effective and scalable.

Matt Stanley, PhD: 41:41

In terms of some of our other work, we found recently that people I guess there are other sort of consequences of this hero label that aren't just the product of these kinds of funneling effects or that don't just produce these funneling effects. So we also find that attaching the hero label to veterans really to any occupation that's heroized so it happens for teachers, it happens for nurses, it happens for firefighters actually a lot of jobs that veterans end up going into, which is sort of moderately ironic, I guess. But for a lot of these jobs, when we attach the hero label to these occupations, people tend to think that it's really much more okay to subject them to really poor treatment in the workplace. So people tend to think that because they're heroes, they're really selfless and resilient, right, and they're courageous and they sacrifice for others, and so they would absolutely be willing to work extra hours without extra pay, not get that overtime pay, do some uncomfortable or difficult jobs that are unrelated to their job duties, maybe even give up some of their benefits. So the hero label actually leads to these kinds of expectations for vets. This is just what people sort of do in the world, this is how their brains work, this is how their minds work, and so it leads to these really unfortunate expectations about what vets would do and what they'd be willing to do. And then that actually affects the legitimacy that we see sort of behind different exploitative policies that are aimed at veterans and other heroized groups. So people then tend to say you know, like I'm not that opposed to a policy that would, like you know, cut pay for teachers or military personnel or veterans, right, you know like they'd probably be okay with it because they're so selfless, because they're so courageous, because they're so resilient, right. And so this hero label seems to have other effects, once you actually get into the workplace, that are sort of problematic in these somewhat surprising ways.

Matt Stanley, PhD: 43:44

Another sort of problem that we're seeing, another thing that we're finding, is that people tend to dehumanize veterans. The public tends to dehumanize veterans, but in a very particular way, so they tend to think of veterans as being sort of machine like, as robotic, as unfeeling, and so this, at least, is problematic in the workplace, especially in contemporary America, because people tend to assume that veterans, because they're effectively machines, right, they can really sort of like endure a lot of difficulty in the workplace, they can work really long hours, they can work under really poor conditions, under unsafe conditions, and that that's just sort of like who they are, that's what they're capable of Like. Obviously, this is a horrible inference. This is not something that we should be making. It's a sign of inference that anybody should be making. But TowerBrain's work, it's this association machine at work. Again, we're assuming that vets are like this because we assume that. We assume that they'd be really okay with doing all of these awful things.

Cheryl Cross: 44:47

So is that the term agentic? Is that the word that I learned from your website? Is that we're going with that?

Matt Stanley, PhD: 44:55

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. So like agentic in terms of having agency, in terms of doing things in the world. So people assume that veterans are agentic they do things, they're active, they get things done right. But the weird thing about that is that when we tend to assume people are agentic, we often also assume that they're sort of unfeeling, and that's what's happening with veterans. This is actually really excellent work from Steve Shepard and I think it's a 2019 paper, where they essentially showed that people see veterans as agentic and unfeeling and this has some negative repercussions for veterans in the workplace.

Cheryl Cross: 45:37

It's dehumanizing 100% and as a DEI specialist, I could tell you I go in and teach corporations about this all the time. You see this a lot in the manufacturing sector. You see this in large workforces that are working together around machines. You really want to make sure that the personalization and the individualization is there and when we look at the military subculture, where they have been trained to do certain tasks, I think that the assumption from the private sector is we can just slot them into something that is similar and as corporations, as people standing in between like myself, those buffers, people like Sean Kelly we have to raise our hand and say hang on, this is wrong.

Cheryl Cross: 46:19

So I could continue talking to you for another hour, but I want to thank you so much for bringing these things to our awareness. I want to also be able to check back in with you as your research evolves and maybe have some other folks from Fuqua talk. I know Sean Kelly is on deck he will be with us at some point and maybe a few of the other researchers, but is there anything? You have a lot on your mind and I don't want to stop you from talking. Is there anything that we've missed or that you would like to leave to our audience as a you know, let's continue this conversation, type of point, and, lastly, tell us how we can get a hold of you if we need to.

Matt Stanley, PhD: 46:59

Yeah, I guess maybe the last thing. So a lot of us, Sean Kelly is an exception, he's absolutely wonderful and he's leading a lot of this. A lot of us who are doing this work aren't veterans ourselves. We just sort of have seen the data and we've seen that veterans face all of these obstacles in ways that are, like, very clearly unfair and unjust, and we don't know a whole lot about why these things are happening. And so a lot of the best research ideas, a lot of the sort of best ways in which we can potentially help, is for veterans, to essentially pick the brains of veterans. What are the challenges that you're facing? What are you seeing? What are you encountering? What's been particularly problematic for you? What do you think has happened to you? And that's actually sort of the collaboration between us as sort of academics and the actual veteran community is really critical for achieving what's the ultimate goal. And the ultimate goal is to sort of give better opportunities or help people get better opportunities, who are deserving of better opportunities.

Cheryl Cross: 48:11

We're all working towards creating less disparity 100%. And thank you so much for your support. You can tune in to the Veterans Transition Research Initiative through Duke the Fuqua, fuqua, and it's FU, not FUQ. It took me a while to learn how to say it and I believe Dr Stanley said it took him at least a year to learn how to say it. You've been there how long?

Matt Stanley, PhD: 48:35

Two years. I'm a slow learner.

Cheryl Cross: 48:39

Well, I want to say thank you and I know that there's a chance for us to engage more with VTRI through the website and I encourage those folks to check you out and maybe subscribe to the newsletter. Dr Stanley, thank you so much for your time today. We'll definitely have you back and I look forward to seeing more of your papers and more of your research as it applies to veterans getting into the workforce. Thanks so much. Thank you. Welcome back to the show. On today's segment, we're going to be talking to a couple who was very fortunate to leave the Army around the same time. I'd like to introduce you to Joe and Katie. Welcome to X CHANGE. How are you both doing today?

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 49:20

Great.

Cheryl Cross: 49:23

We talked a little bit prior to the recording about your transition journey. Why don't one of you launch in and tell me exactly what's been going on and how long you've been out?

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 49:34

Sure, we both got out a little over a year ago, left active duty Army and moved back to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where we're from. Both had good opportunities while we were transitioning to take advantage of some of the career skills programs that the military has. We both were able to do internships with our employers that we eventually transitioned into while we were still in active duty, which was awesome. It was good. It's been really hard. I think people say that the transition is like a difficult time, but a year later you know still. You know we miss the Army, but we also are glad that we left. So it's just an interesting dynamic. We want to help other people as much as we can with our experience.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 50:34

I feel like us, so we're just over, like she said, 12 months into the transition. I think we can go back even in the last 12 months or maybe 15 to 18 months, and there's been a few people who were in the military or maybe not in the military but kind of just a transition that really made a difference in our story and I think looking at how just maybe one or two people sharing experiences or kind of mentoring into the process can really change and make transition easier. So I think that's really why we're interested in helping and just making it easier for other service members going through a similar process.

Cheryl Cross: 51:18

You mentioned hard, so what was hard?

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 51:22

Double career changes. It's all we knew straight out of college is it was the military for us. We were doing that. So the way inside we were kind of groomed to do that the vocabulary, the language, the way of life moving all at the same time. So it's really kind of like changing your way of life as the Army was our way of life career change and moving on all in the same months. So quite a few life changes on the same time.

Cheryl Cross: 51:56

Emotional? Physical?

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 51:59

Yeah.

Cheryl Cross: 52:00

Yeah, what did you see? The difference between, maybe, the military and corporate life. Tell me, Katie, what are your thoughts about that? And I know you're continuing your service as a reservist, so thank you so much. But as you continue on your civilian career in year one, how does that compare to last four years in the military? What are you seeing as some of the glaring differences?

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 52:24

So I think what Joe said about like the language is something that I still really struggle with. There's political military language, but then there's also political corporate America language, a lot of healthcare lingo and jargon that I never used in military healthcare, that now that I'm in corporate civilian healthcare I just have had a huge, huge learning curve and thankfully I work with a team of people who are absolutely amazing. I have a really good veteran mentor who's on my team, so everybody kind of understands and gives me a lot of grace. But I know that in the military we have a very like go, go, go mentality and in the military you get to tell people how it is.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 53:27

If somebody's like acting up or like you know, you need to put them on the carpet. You can't do that in the civilian world. Really it's a lot nicer and at least you know that that's been an adjustment. You can't really just say things how they are, you have to dance around it or talk to HR. You can't be like we're running five miles after work today, so I don't know. And then I think just the team dynamics to our different. In the military you go through so much like shared pain and suffering in the military. That just brings a closeness. Like the civilian world just can't replicate that, and I think that's something that, even though those times were really, really hard, those were like the moments that meant the most to us and like looking back some of our best memories.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 54:22

So that's tough to sometimes just like sit at a desk and be like what's my purpose? So and it's something that I still really struggle with, because all like a couple of weeks ago I was just at my two weeks of annual training where I did Army 24 seven and then I came back on Monday and like sat at my civilian desk and I'm like, this sucks so and I still constantly battle like I miss the Army. I should go back and do that. It's like a conversation we have every other month, like just entertaining that thought, and sometimes I just have to like set boundaries myself. So it's been really hard.

Cheryl Cross: 55:04

So you talk a lot about corporate culture, and that's something I do as a consultant. I work with companies on their core values. It is so important. The military has a very, I think, robust training and in leadership, you're both officers. What did you see when, when you were interviewing? I'm curious did you look at core values as a reason to join a company, or were you just like I just need to get a job?

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 55:30

I might take this one, yeah, so when I was leaving service I was a logistics officer and I wanted to stay in the defense industry. So you know, another big defense company has kind of caught up in like titles, if you will. So, like you know, a sexy company with like a cool sounding role. And I took that and it was good. It got us through, you know, our transition getting a house, you know, starting a paycheck right away, that sort of thing. I became really dissatisfied with the culture. But I was still kind of caught up in the title. You know, when I tell my friends or family what I'm doing, I still, you know, it still sounds cool and we do X, y and Z, still connected to the military. And I didn't have to fully let it go yet because you know that our customer now is the military. We kind of adopt that culture a little bit into the company.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 56:27

It got things went really sour and I got really dissatisfied. You know comradery team that sort of thing and just kind of back to like culture. So I feel like in my first step leaving I was like, oh, I want something cool, you know, cool title and still be connected to the service. You know that sort of thing. I left that position and I actually started a new position, totally outside defense, and it's only been a little over a month right now, but it's so much more refreshing. I feel like looking back and they say this in some of the transition classes and even some of our mentors through the process has set it to don't get too caught up in there's, t here's a left and right, don't get too caught up in titles and salary expectations and things like that. If you interview with a company or a team and it just clicks or just sounds right, I think that goes way longer than some of these other titles, maybe, salary expectations and things like that.

Art Behnke: 57:28

I feel like we were really caught up.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 57:29

I don't want to do this and I want to make this much money and I want to do this thing. But looking back, I think it's so much easier to go to the office or work with the people I do know, because of the values and the culture they have, versus where I was coming from.

Cheryl Cross: 57:43

So I like that you shared that so many folks think joining a government contracting company is continuing the mission. Right, I was, I'm and I'm actually.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 57:55

It's kind of funny. She's talking about how we go back and forth on how committed do we want to be, or we want to change our lifestyle and incorporate the army a little more, and it's actually it's been a thought that I completely blocked out of my mind, but it's come up in conversation, not to.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 58:09

It's like that's not how you want to do it or maybe it's so hard to sing all those other ways to do it and I don't think I could totally let it go, and that's why I say defense, but also how do you continue that core values that you learned in the military?

Cheryl Cross: 58:26

You supported teams as an officer and you're now in a non-DOD role. How do you pull that over to this really cool company you you really find an alignment with? How does that work, Joe?

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 58:38

I think there's like different ways to be a good team player leader. You don't always have to be in front to be a leader. I think that's something that is preaching the military a lot and there's definitely its place. But I feel like right now people are accepting me and kind of like like the attitude I bring or kind of my perspective I bring just through, like talking to people, and I don't know I might have to come back to that one just because it's so new, but I think being outgoing and assertive and kind of cross talk I can't speak for all companies, but I feel like sometimes people get really caught up in just their little silo or roll or cubical, whatever it is. But having the guy come around once a while and just say good morning and ask how they're doing, would you do this weekend I didn't see that too much at Ida Company and I feel like kind of breaking that ice makes people like the officer, whatever it is, so that's kind of where I am now.

Cheryl Cross: 59:39

Different camaraderie for sure. It's everyone for themselves. Sometimes in a corporate environment there's a lot of fear and I applaud you for noticing that in your first year out, because that's something that you can find organizations or lead teams that have real inclusivity, real belonging. So one of the new terms in DEI diversity, equity, inclusion is belonging. People that don't feel like they belong in environments. Some tend to sit in the sideline. So with the retention efforts going on throughout the United States in corporations this is a big issue. I'm glad you're bringing this up. It's really well known and the Veterans Transition Research Initiative over at Fuqua at Duke University has talked a lot about some of the emotional aspects of transition. What would you say are maybe the top few, aside from the corporate culture being different? Did you prepare well in advance or did you give yourself enough time? Or, if you had to do it over, would you give yourself more time? What are your thoughts on that?

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:00:50

I think a lot of officers and people fall into this trap. It's almost like a bragging right, like, oh, I'm getting out, like I dropped my paperwork, like screw this, now I have to try. And it's like this attitude and mindset that the Army asks you to put in that paperwork. I think you can put it in when you're about a year out. So then within that year you're interviewing, you're potentially trying to find an internship, or you're not preparing at all, but you still have like a crappy attitude. And I think we were just both part of units that maybe weren't as supportive as we would have liked of our transition. So you know, there's just like a lot of comments and like shame that almost comes along with like, oh, joe put in his packet, so let's give him this busy work, or it's not like you're just treated the same until you're out the door or on your internship. So that was tough.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:02:07

But I do think that we prepared, we took it really seriously because we knew we were doing it at the same time. So we were like shoot, if we both don't get jobs, like you know, what does that look like? Where are we going to live? What are we going to do? So it was just like an added pressure, I think, for both of us. But you know, we did our resumes together and we went to a lot of our 10 classes together. We took advantage of career fairs and there was a lot of Zoom webinars that we were able to sign in on. I think our commands were pretty supportive of doing those. And then, obviously, some of the transition classes are actually like mandatory by Congress.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:02:55

So the commands you have to go to those with at least the mandatory classes. So I feel like we really took advantage of them. We tried to go on with like an open mind. It's anxious as we might have been Career fairs and things like that but I also know people that got caught up in the. Well, it's mandatory. I'm going to go sit for the two hours and check the box and move on with my life. And two weeks before my final day in the military, I had no idea what I'm doing because I they might I mean she kind of mentioned it feel ashamed, maybe because of how they were treated the last few months in their unit.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:03:30

Or I mean, it's so new. Like we said, it's not just a career, it's like a lifestyle. So it's just so new and so uncomfortable that maybe it's just hard to ask questions or really take advantage of some of those classes. But it's like we went in with a good mindset, we really got the most out of it and we learned a lot through bad resumes and bad interviews and bad interview workshops. So that's true.

Cheryl Cross: 1:03:57

Can you talk about some of those. Give me your bad, bad interviews. I want to hear it. I want to hear all about the bad interviews.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:04:04

Yeah, I can give you one. So I did. I did a career skills program. It's called Hiring our Heroes.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:04:13

So before you can finish matching with companies, you interview just like you would in the real world. But you can take advantage of their network and put a resume in their portal and companies can see it and give you a call if they're interested in whatever position they might have or just to learn more about you. So I think I had gotten five calls or something like that by different companies and the first one that had called me they're really excited about me. And I was really excited too. I was like oh, I got a company that actually called me. Okay, they're interested. I didn't think anyone would be interested. Like I was just a military officer, how do I match this company? And we interviewed and things just kind of sounded off. But I was just so excited that I had gotten a call. I just kind of kept it going, made it to, I think, probably the final round with at least matching with this company, and it got me a salary expectation.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:05:10

The last question is salary expectation and I had no idea how to answer it. I just kind of like choked up, didn't really say anything, gave what I thought was reasonable for my skills and this company thought that it was just way too high and one of the VPs on the call was just kind of like dumbfounded that I even said that number. They gave a number significantly lower than they were looking for and I was just kind of the end of the call. We kind of parted ways and I said thank you.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:05:43

But I talked to a mentor about it. I was like did I do the wrong thing there? Like am I supposed to just say what I want them? Or, you know, try to say what they want to hear, because you're just so excited you matched with someone or that you might have an opportunity, that you're like I don't want to lose a kind of thing and I don't know how this works. And the mentor is like no, I think that call, that lesson was, I think some companies and there's some other phone calls I had to might try to take advantage of a military personnel getting out. I think they recognize some of the skill sets they have and experiences they have and the quality of the work, and that some can be cheap or can be low balled into positions.

Cheryl Cross: 1:06:25

They wanted you to bargain for sure.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:06:27

So I feel like you asked for a story but just handling questions. That might be uncomfortable and I've never been asked that question, or really you know I'd answer it well and make different expectations and it's okay to just move on. It's not a good match, especially with like salary and things like that. I was just going in.

Cheryl Cross: 1:06:48

It's so true. I'm glad you shared that, because that happens so often. There's a million things you can do to prepare for that, but not all of them work and not all of them are right. I mean, how would you potentially know what their salary range is if the recruiter didn't tell you before the interview? Right? Why wasn't that question asked before you spoke to a CEO? Why was that not pre-screened so that they knew your range and could kind of talk you off the ledge? Like, if you talk to company ABC, it's in the 60 to $80,000 range, you want 120. Well, potentially that's not supposed to be on your list.

Cheryl Cross: 1:07:24

Then you know, thank you so much. What a pleasure I'm looking at companies in my range. I'm so grateful that you shared that story because it happens over and over. That's what I saw as the corporate recruiter. That's why I've written a book on negotiation skills for veterans, because interviews went beautifully until this salary expectation question and then they went, ". I don't know and I was horrified, Like what's the military not doing to train these folks? But it's not the military's job to train you for your civilian career salary. It's your job. So you don't have to tell me your salary. But I do want to know were you happy with the salary you got At the company you're with now, or maybe even the first one?

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:08:08

Yeah.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:08:09

I think, just kind of adding to it, some companies. There are some companies that have a really good you know veteran outreach or recruitment program where they might embed or have some people who are veterans that can kind of speak the language and kind of understand your officer they know what that means versus maybe junior and listed or NCO or senior NCO. So I think this first company they just said, " military Everyone in the military is kind of the same or has the same experience, but it's like there's a really wide range of experiences, leadership and whatever it is. So I think that company didn't really handle that well. But to answer your question, may I have you where I am now.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:08:54

Yes, both companies understood the experience and had good you know veteran recruitment programs and understood what it meant where I was coming from or maybe someone else coming from the military was coming from a matching that are raw land compensation. So that was my first phone call that I kind of had to decline or it went sour, but in the end it was, everything came together. It just comes down to how you describe your experience and you can be clear, kind of answer the compensation and good ways.

Cheryl Cross: 1:09:27

That's a great example. It's just like dating right, you don't marry the first person. You go on a date. You don't get married after the first date. You've got to go through a bunch of dates to figure out if somebody's the right one. Companies are and jobs are about the same. So, Katie, I want to ask you if you've had any nightmare stories, or just ones that were great. Maybe you'd like to share. What about you during the interview process? What surprised you?

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:09:52

Gosh, you know, I'm just a different experience. I'd say you're a win, though.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:09:58

Yeah, no, I'm just a. So I don't know. I don't think this is really going to answer your question, because my experience was a little bit different. I sought out the organization that I wanted to work for because I was a patient at this healthcare system when I was a kid and then I did a lot of fundraising for this hospital when I was in college. So I already knew that I aligned with this organization's values. So that's a way, I guess I think it's probably pretty non-traditional and the location was important for us to end up kind of where we ended up. So what I did was I literally went on LinkedIn because we took a how to use LinkedIn class through CSP and I filtered this company and filtered for people who were also in the Army, and this person who popped up is now my boss.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:11:10

So Joe and I were sitting on the couch and he's so rummage this. But I'm like, should I send this guy a message? I'm nervous, like what do I say? Because I wasn't like, hey, will you give me a job? I just asked like would you be open to talking to someone who's going through the military transition? Because I just wanted to connect, and we did that with a lot of different people. I see you as a veteran. Yeah, I could see you as a vet. He was also in the medical service corps. I'm like Joe, this is crazy.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:11:37

It just seemed like it was perfect and like the stars were aligning. And I hope he hears this podcast someday. I'll have to tell him about it. You were really surprised. I was super nervous to send it, but we ended up just like talking for an hour on the phone and it wasn't until months later that I actually reached out from this organization's HR department to ask about kind of building my own internship. And this recruiter or this person from Workforce Development asked me like hey, who do you know at this organization? Do you know anybody? And I'm like should I drop this guy's name? And I was like, yeah, tell her, you know me, and now he's my boss. So I think I'm kind of more of an example about how networking is so, so important and like no message or comment that you leave on somebody's LinkedIn is going to hurt you. A request to connect? Yeah, a connection request.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:12:44

You're just afraid to be like. Oh, I think I remember this first year. They probably don't know, they don't remember me.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:12:51

They just take it, yeah. So I mean, and out of those experiences, like I did, I interviewed and I met with the CEO and I met with a lot of vice presidents and I still went through like the process of you know, they wanted to still make sure I was going to be a good fit, but they built an entire internship program for me. They had no skill bridge program, they were not connected with hiring our heroes, but I was able to. I built it because I knew that's where I wanted to work and I still love working there. It's an amazing culture. I may not, you know, love my actual role, but I love the people I work with and I love the organization.

Cheryl Cross: 1:13:36

I work for. So do you feel you have upward momentum at that company? Like you don't necessarily love what you do, but do you see it as a line to something else or a progression?

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:13:48

Yeah, and I feel like my leaders there are continuously asking me like what's next for you? Well, how can we get you to where you want to be? Because I'm a project manager right now and I think other project managers would agree, you know, if you stay in that role forever or in that department forever, as a project manager, like you're not really growing. And I will make a plug here, for I see this on LinkedIn a lot, just with the transitioning, you know, consultants and things, because I mean, that's like most of my connections on LinkedIn is from when I was transitioning. But a lot of junior officers think that the only job they can get when they get out of the military is to be a project manager or an operations manager, or, and those are all great positions. But I would just say, don't silo yourself into those if you really don't want it, if that's not something that you want to do. And this is coming to people who are project managers. We got our PMPs here, Yep, yep, exactly.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:14:57

So we're, we're textbook cliches, but I think we I like it though, yes, but we, we like the work. It's just funny. I'll read something on LinkedIn that's like oh you know, classic infantry captain gets out and like becomes a project manager, and I'm like oh is that awesome.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:15:20

It's just hard to know what's out there, but there really is so much out there in your experience can wind up with some of the problems and you're going to hear it a lot. You can offer so much more than you probably think just transitioning out leadership and you can have some kind of niche experience somewhere that really benefits the company or blends with the role really well. It's totally outside what you might think.

Cheryl Cross: 1:15:45

I love it. I want one last question. If you knew then what you know now, I would go first.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:15:58

I can go. I say this a lot. I would just say that the transition isn't over. When you think it's going to be over, so I think a lot of people are like, oh, a year out, it's not over.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:16:19

We both, in all of the classes that we took and all the people we talked to, they said the transition is hard, it's going to be hard, but I don't think we realized how hard it was going to be and we have it all together right. Like we bought a house, we both got jobs, but it's like that piece of our identity was lost and I think there's not enough kind of coaching or classes within the transitioning programs that the different services have that tell you to get help when you get out, because Joe and I were never deployed to combat or X, y, Z, I don't know if you need to know that, but we went through some really, really hard things and were so attached to the work that we were doing and the people that we were serving with and when you lose that it's like it's there one day and gone the next and again.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:17:27

Nothing in the civilian world really replicates that. So we both sought mental health help when we got out, because I think we were just struggling with trying to adjust. We're still trying to adjust. So I would say I don't know if there's anything I could have done about it back then, but just that this was going to be a journey and it was going to be a lot longer than the transition itself.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:17:56

So that's what I would say.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:17:58

Thank you, Joe. I know I kind of hit it before so I won't go into that.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:18:03

I would say like two parts, so don't get too caught up in titles, or maybe we'll sound in company just to the sound squad, but something you really want to go for. But you'll be in an interview or when you know it it'll just kind of click and think I just feel good about it. So I'm going to go with this one and I feel like it really will come along. It just might take some bumps to get there. The second part is she kind of hit on it too, just in a different way.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:18:32

You put so much time and part of your heart until the work in the military that I don't think we realized how passionate we were. I mean, we love it, but it really is like a part of you when you leave. So, finding a passion or somehow to balance that out and the civilian side too, I think we're still trying to figure that out. But your job doesn't necessarily have to be your full-time passion. I feel like in the military it is for a lot of people and there's other ways to look for fulfillment or balance that in the military time in your life too, it's like those two things.

Cheryl Cross: 1:19:15

Thank you so much. I love your bravery and your honesty and your transparency and sharing your story. I know that you're going to help all the folks that are listening, wherever they are in their transition journey, if they're just planning for it, or if they're in the soup, or if they're in that first year, or even five years. I think you made a great point. Transition doesn't just end after the first year. It continues on. It's a continuous transition. So thank you for sharing your insights. Any last alibis before we say goodbye?

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:19:47

I love that you just said alibi, because people in my organization now make fun of me in a good way for that, but I still try to use some military language and they're like, okay, you love that.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:20:00

I love that you said alibi, but no, I have no alibis, really don't be afraid to reach out to people and ask questions and find a mentor to whether you're a military or not. It's like we both have civilian and military veterans that we can kind of ask questions to for different reasons. But like, really I can stop it, open mind to questions and we'll check out if you need it.

Cheryl Cross: 1:20:26

So, yeah, definitely ask for support. Well, thank you both. We're going to end our segment, but I'd love to have you back as you both journey forward in your career. Like I said, I know what you've shared is going to be very helpful and if anyone wants to reach out to you, do you want to connect on LinkedIn? Do you want to spell your names? I know you have great LinkedIn profiles because you used LinkedIn to get jobs, so why don't you go ahead and tell us how they can hook up with you and make a connection with you?

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:20:54

Yeah, so our last name is Rebholz, so it's Romeo, echo, bravo Hotel Oscar Lima, zulu, and I'm Katie and he's Joe, so and we're in Wisconsin. So if you want to filter by that, or if you're ever in the great state of Wisconsin, feel free to hit either of us up.

Cheryl Cross: 1:21:16

Shout out to our friends over at Mission Wisconsin who I believe are on your mentor list.

Katie and Joe Rebholz: 1:21:22

Absolutely yes, definitely. They got us through a lot Well, thank you so much.

Cheryl Cross: 1:21:29

We'll see you on the next show. Thanks so much for tuning in and we'll be back. After a word from this sponsor Welcome back, I'm so glad that you've been with us this long in the hour. At the end of each segment we have someone who has been in the workforce for at least five years and I am honored to bring to you former Marine and now very successful civilian corporate guy, Art Benke. Welcome, Art.

Art Behnke: 1:21:57

Hey, thank you for having me. I'm Cheryl. Look forward to speaking with you and hopefully shedding some insightful light on some of your podcast members who are listening to us.

Cheryl Cross: 1:22:06

I think you're going to bring a lot of value to this today. So you know, before the show we always talk about what it is that you'd like to talk about, and you covered something about the transitioning timeline and I want to know from your perspective, even though it was a few years ago, what are your thoughts on an appropriate time to start applying for jobs and how does that impact the entire transition timeline that the military gives you?

Art Behnke: 1:22:32

That's a great question. It's one that many transitioning military members are going to hear during their TAP course as a transition, and in the TAP course they're going to say, hey, you should start looking at transitioning two years prior. Unfortunately, most people don't go through the TAP course until three months to six months prior, so they are missing that, and I would say that the vast majority of military members start thinking about the transition too late. If anyone if I'm working with anyone one-on-one, I'm saying that two years out they need to start having ideas of where they want to live, what they want to do, what their family wants with them, all of that. However it gets expedited, it happens in three to six months and that's far too quick to be successful at it. I did it in a year and I can tell you that I felt like my transition was still too tight.

Cheryl Cross: 1:23:31

So you felt rushed. What might you do differently had you had an opportunity to look back and do things differently? What would that be in terms of transition timeline?

Art Behnke: 1:23:42

I would have been more deliberate with my planning and my networking. Two years prior I had heard I had been told, hey, start your transition plan two years prior. So I had known that and I had it in the back of my mind and my wife and I discussed it here and there. But to be honest in earnest, it didn't start to about 12 months prior and that 12 months went by really quickly.

Art Behnke: 1:24:09

You think, or an individual can think, hey, 12 months is a lot. I can accomplish a lot in this 12 months as far as transitioning from the military in my case the Marine Corps but reality is that 12 months gets eaten out with a number of other type commitments. One you're still a full-time military member or, in my case, the Marine and your daily duties are still there and you're an active duty military member, so you feel obligated to do those to the fullest. You still have all your life commitments, your time with your spouse, your time with your kids, you've got all the holidays that come up, and then now you've got all your retirement paperwork, the courses that you have to go through to prepare for retirement. So that 12 months may seem like a lot to someone who's 14 months from retirement right now, but in reality, that 12 months gets eaten out really quickly, which is why I highly encourage people to start it in earnest 24 months from the retirement date, if they know when that's going to be.

Cheryl Cross: 1:25:15

One of the neat things about you are you're not only former military, you're not only successful in the civilian job force, but you are formally a recruiting and hiring manager. So I'm going to pull on your recruiting hiring manager brain. I know you did that pretty immediately after leaving the Marine Corps, but I want to see what you saw when you were actively recruiting veterans to join the civilian workforce. Can you share some of that?

Art Behnke: 1:25:44

Yeah, first off, my first job when I left the Marine Corps was with a company called IM Flash, which was a joint venture between Intel and my company. It was a semiconductor industry. In the first two years, in that I was in a total productive maintenance or total productive manufacturing role, and then years three to four is when I transitioned to a workforce management and then I had a team of recruiters. Now the people that the military members that were applying with us were typically technicians that were going to be working on the tools that keep the fab running and keep making wafers and semiconductors every day. Fabrication sites, morning semiconductor manufacturer out there Intel, Micron, Texas Instruments, Samsung on down the line.

Art Behnke: 1:26:35

These sites are multi-billion dollar sites.

Art Behnke: 1:26:38

They're seven to 12 billion dollar sites and in order to make money they've got to be making wafers or semiconductors every single minute of every single day, 365 days a year. So from a recruiting standpoint to get more directly to your question the people that we would usually recruit were the technicians that were keeping this equipment running, and I think the experience was much like most transitioning military members. They weren't thinking about a year ahead of time. They had executed their orders until they decided they didn't want to go for another four years. They were transitioning at six, eight, 10 years, whatever milestone they were at, and they probably came to that epiphany probably three months prior to actually leaving the military.

Art Behnke: 1:27:38

Sometimes we got a hold of these people while they were on military bases. Other times they were already retired, they didn't have a job or they had an interim job and they were looking for something that paid better and was more long term. So in all those cases I would say that 95% of them could have done a better job of being prepared for that transition and not necessarily the interview, but the transition. And then to shed some light of hope to your motorT guys, your auto mechanics, your aviation guys on the flight line all that stuff. Your skill level is highly sought after across numerous industries out there, and I would venture to say that the majority of those military members that we hired into the semiconductor industry to work at these fabrication sites never really considered it as a viable transitioning opportunity.

Cheryl Cross: 1:28:47

Yes, let's pile on to that because you add something that's very important. I think that I've seen military folks going from MOS to MOS. It's very specific on what they'll be doing for the next two, three years, based on what the MOS directive is. But in the corporate world, in the civilian workforce, you can transfer those skills in different ways. Now your military family support center, your resume helpers, your career coaches, your TAPs or E-TAPs classes will teach you how to take that into more of a language. That will reflect on the resume but hopefully in your verbiage. When you get into an interview you can speak to it. But I think that's interesting that you say that, because I see a lot of companies that are looking for something different. They're looking for what we in workforce call transferable skills. So if somebody could do ABC and I'm being vague for a reason they could do EFG. They may not have D in the middle, but we believe, because they did ABC, they could push over and do this very other thing.

Cheryl Cross: 1:29:56

Obviously you did this and I knew that when you were recruiting that you were actually looking for people that had what Was it? Leadership? Was it? Was it? What is it Social intelligence? I read a Forbes article recently. It's like these skills are missing from the workforce and they were all soft skills. They weren't technical skills. Talk to that.

Art Behnke: 1:30:16

Yeah, that's great. You know, when I did my, I'll talk both first internally and then externally. When I looked at my transition, I looked a lot about what I liked about Marine Corps. I knew the soft skills. I had a good idea of the hard skills I had and the soft skills I had in leadership, the EQ, emotional intelligence, the leadership, the developing teams, the building, building teams and developing people. I had an idea of all that.

Art Behnke: 1:30:47

Now it was for me as a field grade officer, lieutenant, colonel, transitioning. At that time it was trying to see what job opportunities there were that I could take advantage of or try to get my resume seriously considered. So that was a tough role and I think that's I think that's slightly different for officers and enlisted life that are transitioning anywhere from 16 years to 24 years. If you are a transitioning military member, officer or enlisted and you're transitioning from four to 10 years, there is a litany of corporate opportunities out there for you, because there what they're looking for there is that not necessarily a hard skill of knowing how to turn a wrench or torque something appropriately, but a soft skill of being able to show up on time, being able to be reliable, being dependable, be teachable, be moldable, be reasonable, be consistent and all of that stuff is shit and extremely easy for people to do, especially military members. But reality is people apply for jobs, take jobs all time and they may be reliable for a week or two and then they're showing up late to work or maybe they don't even show up for the first day of work.

Art Behnke: 1:32:24

The military members that we hired, especially when I was in workforce management, those military members were never like that.

Art Behnke: 1:32:32

We knew what we were getting and what we were getting was someone who would show up, was teachable, was moldable, would be consistent at work, would be consistent with their emotions and their professionalism. So that is something that everyone should understand when they transition. But then, tangentially and externally, and going back to hiring at IAM Flash specifically, I think that a lot of military members get stuck in this rut when they transition of hey, who are the last 6, 12 people that I knew or were my friends and what did they transition and go out and do? Hey, they went and got a job to be a GS. They went and got a job at DOD contractor, keeping it ambiguous A, b or C, and because they may have followed a very similar career path to their colleagues. They almost feel directed or channelized to following the same career path and I want our transition military members across the board to understand that you can absolutely follow the career path of those before you, that transition if that's what you want to do.

Art Behnke: 1:34:02

But you can also have the confidence to chart your own path and then open that path up for military members who are transitioning behind you. Whether it's jumping in and semi-conductors, whether it's jumping into being an entrepreneur by pursuing a franchising opportunity, whether it's, you've had something on your mind for five years and you think you can build the next best widget. Well, design it, prototype it and try to take that to market. If you've got the GI Bill, while you're doing that, use your GI Bill. You go get an education, get your master's degrees out, supplement the prototyping of that next widget with that income.

Cheryl Cross: 1:34:45

I like that. I like that you're talking about going to the self and really doing some self-exploration. We tend to externalize, when we're in a hurry, the 12 months that you're given to transition. You're doing everything and getting a job is a job. It is a full-time job. So it could take you three, six, 12 months to go get that right job. Now, if you're looking for just any job, you will get a job. Most likely you will get a job. But looking at the statistics you and I were speaking about this earlier that the statistics for people failing in their first year of a job are so high coming out of the military that and I'm not going to fix this today and I don't think as a team we're going to fix this but I don't want that for any corporation or for any individual, because it's a lot of money, it's a lot of energy and it's a lot of I want to call it ego thrust, because you've put all of these expectations into this job. It's like, whew, I got a job Finally. Ok, I can go sell the house. I can go get the military to relocate me back to my home of record, I can out-process for my medical, I can do all these things. I got the job. It's like well, hold on now. Although these things are important, the military will walk you through these, but you're going to be literally living in that job the majority of your time post-military.

Cheryl Cross: 1:36:09

Don't just go get a job, so go internal, speak to your family. I'll give a story that you'll like. I spoke to a colonel who's coming out in a few years, so he wanted to speak to me and he asked me to speak to his military spouse and I said absolutely so. In speaking with the military spouse, she said our dream is to own an inn. I said an inn Like a hotel, bed and breakfast. She said, yeah, bed and breakfast. When my military husband has some time off, we go around the country and we look at inns for sale and that is our dream.

Cheryl Cross: 1:36:48

And I thought that's really cool because he has several years in order to get out, so they are pre-planning in advance. And he said to me you know if I need to get a job to supplement our dream? But they had the dream, they had the vision and I just so appreciated that, because they're working together as a family with four kids and they talk to the kids hey, kids, do you want to be innkeepers. Let's take classes together as a family on owning a bed and breakfast. Let's look at what living in Northern Virginia would be like off in the rural areas. You know, I just thought that was brilliant because they're coming at it so early. So this really resonates with what you're saying on being ready, not just being thrown into something. Plan, plan where you're going to be, plan to be there at least a year or two. And if that's the case, how might you look at things differently now as you're going through I call it the soup as you're going through your active transition time?

Art Behnke: 1:37:49

Yeah, I like what you said. I wrote down a couple of notes. First thing, ruto, is to that couple and their transition for thinking well ahead, knowing themselves and having a vision of owning an inn and this conversation is going to become somewhat circular because I'll go back to knowing yourself and having that vision. But a couple of things I want to hit on that you said. I absolutely agree that searching for a job is a job. And going back to what we discussed earlier as far as transitioning, whether it's three months, 12 months or 24 months, that time gets eaten up with other stuff and people don't really realize it's a job until they're in that last month of transition or they've transitioned, they don't have a job.

Art Behnke: 1:38:38

And now they're realizing how many hours they need to put forth to be successful. So what I would encourage people who are looking for a job, whether they're 24 months from transitioning from the military or one month from transitioning to the military, is, as you do that approach it just as that it's a job. So when you're transitioning, you have two jobs. You have your primary job of your military occupational specialty and you have your secondary job of finding your next job and in that job you need to be putting together or putting in 40 to 60 hours a week, maybe even 80 hours a week. I would say if you're two years from transitioning, you may be able to get away with 20 to 35 hours a week, but when you're a year, you need to be putting forth 40, maybe 60 hours a week and if you're into that last three months of transition, now you need to be putting 60 to 80 hours a week to finding that job. So, from there, one thing you said was the and I forget the statistic, but I used to know it at one point but a very large percentage of military members when they transition, they only have that first job for less than a year, and the term you used was fail, and while I understand what you're trying to convey there, I would not use fail, because they didn't fail at the job they took. They just did not take the time to appropriately align their wants and desires, their knowledge of themselves, with what would lead to a successful job as a next career. So I don't want them to think that they failed in that career. If they could have improved at anything, it would be stepping back in the transition years and being methodical about how they transition. Now going to that is and I'm referencing my notes down here what you hit was knowing yourself. For me, when I transition, I knew that for two decades, every orders I had gotten I may have had my list of two to four, my priority of two to four, that I would have liked. My two to four options that I prioritized, that I would have liked is how I should say that, and I included my family in that decision. But the reality is, when it came down to it, the decision was ultimately made by the needs of the Marine Corps and not the needs of Art Behnke or Angie Behnke or my kids, and so this transition is really the first opportunity where you can truly involve your spouse, your kids, your family, however small or large it is, and involve them in this decision, and they get as much of a say as you do. And there is no needs of the Marine Corps, needs of the military, that trump your desires. So take the time ahead of time to figure out where you want to live. For this person it sounds like they want to live in maybe the hills of Vermont or Virginia or something like that.

Art Behnke: 1:42:01

For an end, my family and I did the same thing. We looked at it. We said, of all the places we've lived, we've thoroughly loved all of them. But what is it we liked about them? Well, we liked being able to see vertical relief. We didn't want us to be on a really flat plane where we can see things. Coming to that realization, we realized that we were going to be living somewhere on the West Coast or East Coast, near the mountains, near the Smoky Mountain Range, or in Hawaii, we can see the island volcanoes shoot up. So that seemed really minor. But if we lived on the plane somewhere, we wouldn't have been happy and wouldn't have been enjoying that. So that was part of it. Another part was what is it?

Art Behnke: 1:42:51

I went into the Marine Corps, thinking I would stay in for four years, eight years, and I ended up being in 21 years. So I had to do a lot of soul searching to realize what it was. I guess not a lot of soul searching, but a lot of reflection, to figure out what it is that I enjoyed about the Marine Corps and what kept me in. And it came down to having a purpose behind what I did, having values behind what I did, being driven by what I did. So I had listed all that stuff and made that a priority as well. My spouse did the same thing and my kids did the same thing, and then we aligned all that. That assessment gave us a good knowledge of who I was and who we were as a unit, which then we then took to what our vision was.

Art Behnke: 1:43:44

Ok, if we want to live somewhere on the West Coast or near mountains, what opportunities are there? And what made me want to do that we love? I grew up skiing. I loved skiing. I would have taken an appropriate role in the ski industry Very quickly, but in lieu of that I was going to take roles that were fulfilling to me and I could ski as many days as I wanted to throughout the year. I have no idea how many days I have skiing this year, but I'll have 900 inches this year. I had a lot of days skiing this year. That was good. So that's the circular part is bringing it back to knowing yourself and vision. And then and I know you want to get something in here, but I wrote one other thing while you wrote down and this got me thinking about my job as a in workforce management as a recruiter.

Art Behnke: 1:44:37

Are you familiar with the term gig economy? Yes, please talk about it. Ok, so the reason why I want to mention this is there's a couple of books out there probably numerous books out there now and there's a term called gig economy. And what the gig economy is is it's basically a theory or a thought process or a realization of a number of people now who may or may not, or may not want to have a job for 30 years. They basically want to have a gig job and they want to do that gig job to basically save up enough money to go backpack Italy or go, you know, live for a year on a work visa in Australia and enjoy life that way. Or, you know, so they can take, you know, four months off and ski all winter. Then they're going to save up the money so they can ski the next winter, or whether it's whitewater rafting or whatever.

Art Behnke: 1:45:31

And that gig economy it's definitely not the entire economy, but there's a population that is a gig economy and any recruiter is going to be looking at your resume and look at the turnover of jobs that you've had in that time frame, and anytime you can show a consistency with an employer. They sort of view you as less likely as being part of the gig economy and more likely as being a more long-term hire. Now, as you transition to the military, you may have four to 35 years, so you're not necessarily that gig economy person who's getting a job for eight months and then is unemployed for four months and getting a job for eight months.

Art Behnke: 1:46:19

But you do need to know that that perception is out there and one. If you want to be a gig economy person, great, you can have a lot of fun and I highly encourage you to realize that and then do what you can to capitalize it on enjoyment. However, if you don't want to find yourself there, understand if you retire or get out of the military and your first job is less than a year because you didn't like that fit, and then you take a second job and that job is less than a year because you didn't like that fit. Now you roll to your third job and you take that job. That job is less than a year because you don't like that fit. You are now, are looking, you are now are displaying to the recruiter that you will not be there more than a year and you are greatly diminishing your odds of landing the job that you may really like and you obviate that. You mitigate that by knowing yourself, having a vision and methodically following a plan for a successful transition.

Cheryl Cross: 1:47:24

Agreed and thank you for bringing that up. There are so many websites now that are focusing on remote, hybrid, short-term work. Working Nomads is one of my favorites. There are some fee-based ones that I won't mention, but do look at the free ones that are available. Gig Economy is Google-able. You can check it out and if that's something, like Art said, that fits your lifestyle and really your personality, after you have served X amount of years in the military or as you seek your next stage of life in your career, that might be an option for you. Art, you are such a pleasure and such a knowledgeable guy. I know that you're going to be back for other segments. I just wanted to say thank you so much for your time and your energy. If somebody wanted to get a hold of you, would LinkedIn be the best way? And for those that are listening through EarPods and maybe on a treadmill or running from PCS to PCS and not looking at a screen, can you spell your name for us?

Art Behnke: 1:48:20

Yes, absolutely, Answer your question first. Yes, LinkedIn would be the best way. I do try to be an active mentor to two to three people, so LinkedIn's the best way to get a hold of me. I'd be glad to answer some questions. If I'm not mentoring someone and it's a good fit I wouldn't mind being a mentor as well. And the way to spell my name is Art A-R-T and last name Banky B-E-H-N-K-E. I'll spell it medically as well Bravo, Echo Hotel November, Kilo Echo.

Cheryl Cross: 1:48:53

You're awesome, Art. Have a great rest of your day. Well, episode two is in the can. Thanks so much for joining us, and special thanks to our guest, Joanna Ream, Dr Matt Stanley, Katie and Joe Rebholz and Art Behnke. I'm your host, Cheryl Cross. Before we go, I just want to say thanks. This has been an incredible ride and we have so many stories ahead to share with you. Before you go and listen to the next episode, I just want to remind you you are strong, you are brave, you are skilled and you are trained. These are all things that the post-military world is looking for. As you enter into the civilian workforce, I know you're going to do a great job. Thanks for being part of this community. I'll see you soon.